The Concrete Days
by DivergentDanceFreak
Summary: Back in Abnegation there wasn't much to do during the summer, but there most definitely were many ways to rebel and little Beatrice Prior finds a way to do both.


I feel the concrete, pressing into my back. The cracks and random pebbles scattered around the road make indentations in the skin of my arms, my legs. My golden hair is splayed out around my head like a halo as I stare up at the beautiful blue sky.

It is a good day, today is.

I am laying down in the middle of the road, stretched out and safe; the only people with vehicles in Abnegation are people high-up in the government, like Marcus Eaton. But today, on this gorgeous, hot, sunny Sunday, Mr. Eaton is home with his son.

I know because I saw his car parked in his driveway this morning.

When I do hear a car, though, I wait. I wait as long as I can. Only when the sound is loud enough in my ears to hear ringing will I roll over to the side of the street.

That, along with the speeding car, blows my hair around and gets in my face.

I let the Abnegation drive by.

And then I simply roll back into my spot, and continue lounging on the concrete.

I gaze at the pearly-white clouds and try to count how many there are in the sky. It's not quite as fun as counting the stars in the sky on a mid-summer night, but it will have to do. There are a few big, puffy ones lower in the sky that remind me of cotton balls that my mother puts in our ears when we have earaches. Above those there are wispy clouds. I imagine if breaths could look like anything, they would like like these clouds, like God himself blew us a kiss and traveled here on his breath, on this cloud.

I run one of my hands along the ground, listening to the gravelly sound of the rocks and dirt scraping against each other and my hand. The tiny stones roll over beneath my palm.

In my other hand I hold a flower. I think my mother once told me it's called a "Morning Glory."

It is a rich indigo flower with petals soft as velvet, soft as satin, soft as silk. The very center of it, though, is white. As it gets closer to the edge, the color deepens, at first just to a light violet, but then to a heavy magenta and finally to a color so beautiful you wonder whether it really is a color, or just a figment of your overactive imagination.

That's what I'm doing now, as I twist the stem in my hands, as I pet the pebbles, as I count the clouds; I am thinking about my overactive imagination.

Actually, I'm thinking about a boy, a boy whose eyes are the exact color of the edges of the flower, and whether or not the smile he offered me from his window as I walked here was just that: a figment of my overactive imagination.

I hope not.

I don't know him, but he seems nice enough.

I hum a quiet tune I just made up to myself.

In the sky there are seven Cotton Balls and five God's Breaths. That's what I've named the clouds.

In my mind there is one Morning Glory. That's what I've named the Eaton boy, whose eyes are like flowers.

* * *

I come back to this spot in the road everyday in the summer.

I lay down on the hot, uneven, familiar gray concrete.

And just think.

Sometimes it's about factions and other times it's about nothing in particular, like today.

I smile and look up to the cloudless sky, wondering when God might blow me another kiss. I purse my lips and pretend to kiss the sky. Oh, if only I could reach it. Then, I could wrap myself around those clouds like a blanket and be immersed in a sea of nothing.

I hold up my hand to the blue, blue sky and pretend I can touch it. I imagine it would feel like water.

We learned about oceans in school; If the sky feels like water, then there would be two vast expanses of never-ending blues, parallel to each other and perfect.

If the sky feels like water, I imagine I can swim in it. So then flying, really, is only swimming. As long as you know how to swim, you know how to fly. So then, does that mean that a bird is a fish and a fish is a bird?

I laugh at myself.

This is what the concrete days do to me; they fill my head with nonsense and nonsense and nonsense. So much so that I'm starting to think that maybe I should be Amity.

I let that thought sink in.

And I roll over and gag myself.

But if imagining is Amity, then isn't laying in the middle of the road all day Dauntless? Or is it just stupid?

I'd like to think that these concrete days are a little show of rebellion from a little Abnegation girl.


End file.
